Configure document types for your iCloud container

Q:  How to make my iCloud container ready to accept documents from UIActivityViewController?

A: On iOS, UIActivityViewController allows an app to add a document to other apps' iCloud container by user interactions. When an app is ready to share a document, it wraps that document as a UIActivityItemProvider object, then creates a UIActivityViewController object and presents it; users can then tap the Add To iCloud Drive button, and pick an iCloud container to add the document.

To accept a document from UIActivityViewController, your app needs to expose its iCloud container to iCloud Drive and declare that it can handle the document type. The detailed steps to expose an iCloud container is described in QA1893, and the document type declaration will be done by setting up a CFBundleDocumentTypes entry in your app’s info.plist.

Listing 1 is a sample CFBundleDocumentTypes entry declaring that the app can handle the PDF file type and a document type created by its own. (The strings with the “Your_” prefix are placeholders that should be replaced with values appropriate for your app.)

Listing 1  A sample CFBundleDocumentTypes entry

 <key>CFBundleDocumentTypes</key>

    <array>

        <dict>

            <key>CFBundleTypeIconFiles</key>

            <array/>

            <key>CFBundleTypeName</key>

            <string>Adobe PDF</string>

            <key>CFBundleTypeRole</key>

            <string>Viewer</string>

            <key>LSHandlerRank</key>

            <string>Alternative</string>

            <key>LSItemContentTypes</key>

            <array>

                <string>com.adobe.pdf</string>

            </array>

        </dict>

        <dict>

            <key>CFBundleTypeIconFiles</key>

            <array/>

            <key>CFBundleTypeName</key>

            <string>Your_Type_Name</string>

            <key>CFBundleTypeRole</key>

            <string>Editor</string>

            <key>LSHandlerRank</key>

            <string>Owner</string>

            <key>LSItemContentTypes</key>

            <array>

                <string>com.Your_Company.Your_Type</string>

            </array>

        </dict>

    </array>

A new document type normally needs to be exported so as to be used by the other parties of the system. This can be done by adding a UTExportedTypeDeclarations entry in the info.plist. You can see Listing 2 for an example. The detailed discussion on this topic is covered in Declaring New Uniform Type Identifiers section.

Listing 2  A sample UTExportedTypeDeclarations entry

 <key>UTExportedTypeDeclarations</key>

    <array>

        <dict>

            <key>UTTypeConformsTo</key>

            <array>

                <string>public.content</string>

                <string>public.data</string>

            </array>

            <key>UTTypeDescription</key>

            <string>Your_Type_Description</string>

            <key>UTTypeIdentifier</key>

            <string>com.Your_Company.Your_Type</string>

            <key>UTTypeTagSpecification</key>

            <dict>

                <key>public.filename-extension</key>

                <array>

                    <string>Your_Extension_Name</string>

                </array>

                <key>public.mime-type</key>

                <string>Your_Mime-type</string>

            </dict>

        </dict>

    </array>

When exporting types, be sure to add a UTTypeConformsTo entry to declare the conformance to at least public.content and public.data. Having a container that can only contain types that don’t conform to public.item (which public.data does) will cause it to be disabled in UIActivityViewController.

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